Terry Riley quotes

Terry Riley is an American composer and a pioneering figure in minimalist music. His works, such as "In C" and "A Rainbow in Curved Air," have had a profound influence on contemporary classical and electronic music. He has inspired generations of composers and musicians with his innovative use of rhythm, repetition, and improvisation. Here are 13 of his quotes:

Everyone seems to be in a kind of accelerated time mode that is beyond their own control. (Terry Riley)
It is important that we are coming up on the millennium because what I am experiencing, just being one person out of billions, is the feeling of acceleration. I experience this through my contact with other people. View quote
Terry Riley
Music can also be a sensual pleasure, like eating food or sex. But its highest vibration for me is that point of taking us to a real understanding of something in our nature which we can very rarely get at. It is a spiritual state of oneness. View quote
Terry Riley
I had already done Rainbow in Curved Air and had a big record on CBS. I was launched to have a long career and then I just dropped out and went to India. View quote
Terry Riley
Essentially my contribution was to introduce repetition into Western music as the main ingredient without any melody over it, without anything just repeated patterns, musical patterns. View quote
Terry Riley
Out of doing all that experimentation with sound I decided I wanted to do it with live musicians. To take repetition, take music fragments and make it live. Musicians would be able to play it and create this kind of abstract fabric of sound. View quote
Terry Riley
Talking about the all night concerts, I did some of the first all night concerts back in the 60's with this little harmonium, and I also had saxophone taped delays. View quote
Terry Riley
We are either going to dissolve as a human race or we are going to break through into a new understanding of what it is to be a human being. View quote
Terry Riley
It seems like we are moving towards something, some kind of point and it is probably going to be an important point in our development or dissolution. That is what everybody seems to be thinking. View quote
Terry Riley
I really didn't have a plan, I just went in and started playing. one of my specialties was to be able to play for a really long time without stopping and I would play these repeated patterns for hours and hours and I wouldn't seem to get tired. View quote
Terry Riley
Well I guess my music came to prominence around one piece called 'In C' which I wrote in 1964 at that time it was called 'The Global Villages for Symphonic Pieces', because it was a piece built out of 53 simple patterns and the structure was new to music at that time. (Terry Riley)
Acceleration is finite, I think, according to some laws of physics. View quote
Terry Riley
I was using tape loops for dancers and dance production. I had very funky primitive equipment, in fact technology wasn't very good no matter how much money you had. View quote
Terry Riley

Terry Riley

Terry Riley - Image
Occupation: American Composer
Born: June 24, 1935
Quotes count: 13